Oh west, where goes thy vote?

Damien Murphy

Like corporate executives who sleep rough one night a year to feel the plight of Australia's homeless, Prime Minister Julia Gillard plans to sleep in western Sydney to feel Labor's pain.

Crushed by bad opinion polls and Obeid fatigue, Ms Gillard is bravely making a five-day swing through Labor's once heartland from Sunday in a desperate attempt to reconnect with her lost tribe before the federal election.

But there are some things Gillard should know before she goes on the stump.

In fact, an early form of the ALP, Irish convicts, suffered their first defeat in an 1804 riot that became known as the Australian battle of Vinegar Hill at Rouse Hill. Nine convicts were executed and scores sent to a fate considered worse than the local jail, Newcastle.

While western Sydney is proudly known for its multicultural population, it also contains an impressive piece of Australiana - one of the nation's two remaining Ettamogah Pubs (the other is on the Sunshine Coast).

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It also boasts the only known redoubt of resistance in Sydney against the age of television politics.

The Great Union Blacktown Drive-in Theatre is Sydney's last working drive-in. Arnold Schwarzenegger's The Last Stand is currently showing, although none of the locals thought it had any hidden message for the ALP.

Gillard is no stranger to western Sydney but sometimes the nuances get lost when she heads inland from Kirribilli House.

Last April, two weeks after the Greater Western Sydney Giants made their AFL debut, she journeyed west to announce $8 million in funding for soccer in Sydney's west. That night she fronted a community cabinet at nearby Parramatta where the vetted questions so bored heartland supporters that many left.

Nevertheless, Parramatta these days is NSW Labor's new Jerusalem.

Two months ago, the ALP NSW general secretary, Sam Dastyari, announced the party was considering abandoning its CBD headquarters for the Parramatta heartland.

Although the party is still snug in Sussex Street, a federal election campaign office at Parramatta will be one of the key announcements aimed at proving Labor means business when Gillard addresses a sold-out crowd at the Parramatta campus of the University of Western Sydney on Sunday. She's also the star attraction at a $100-a-head dinner later that night, also sold out.

Not all are so welcoming.

Fiona Scott, the Liberal candidate for Lindsay, said Gillard should stay out at Penrith Panthers and drive into the city on the M4 Motorway in the morning peak hour, then drive back again for 6pm, as though she had children she had to pick up from daycare before closing.

''I think if she could understand how people are living she would be in a better position,'' Scott said.

''She has three ministers who live out here, who are obviously not advocating well, or she is not listening . . . The issues of Parramatta are different to the issues of Penrith or Campbelltown.''